The ENIAC was the first computer built to take full advantage of electronic processing speeds and to “think” for itself using conditional branching and nested subroutines. It was entirely electronic and is credited with introducing the modern, computer industry. Not bad, Philly. Not bad.

The ENIAC vision is largely credited to physicist John Mauchly and young engineer J. Presper Eckert, through U.S. Army experimental funding. Here’s more oral history on that.

The ENIAC belongs to the Smithsonian, though small pieces are on loan at the University of Pennsylvania, in Minnesota and elsewhere. More info.

Mauchly and Eckert, went on to create UNIVAC, the first programmable computer designed for business applications. More info.

Originally designed for the production of ballistic tables for World War II, the machine was not completed until after the war ended. It was widely used for scientific computation until the early 1950s. More info.

Who gets credit? “With the advent of everyday use of elaborate calculations, speed has become paramount to such a high degree that there is no machine on the market today capable of satisfying the full demand of modern computational methods.” From the ENIAC patent (U.S.#3,120,606) filed on June 26, 1947. The patent was later invalidating by a legal rebuke.